Austrian start-up offers firewalls in UK

By Dave Nixon

This month sees the soft launch in the UK of a minute but rapidly-growing Austrian start-up that claims it can compete with the security giants Cisco, Juniper, and Check Point.

Appears to be an implausible goal, but novice and IPO success Phion is flush with success, having lately outbid rivals to win a massive 2,500 location contract with the German Post Office. The company claims it has become a serious player in the Austrian, German, and Swiss market, and possess particular success in the financial and manufacturing sectors.

Phion now aims to market most of its widespread assortment of security products to UK customers, but the focus will be on its UTM-like branch office security boxes, known under the ‘netfence M’ sub-brand. These run from 100 to 1,000 users in capacity.

Founded in the Tyrol by a trio of young physicists, the company has a single great mountain to climb: it has not yet announced any resellers. An statement on that is promised in a matter of weeks. In Germany, the company uses Computacenter, but this partner will be vital in appropriately promoting an unfamiliar name.